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VPR's coverage of arts and culture in the region.

Young Writers Project: 'What Is A Right?'

 Orwell, Vermont, Faith Holzhammer takes us to a gritty place this week as she contemplates the future of Earth and its youngest inhabitants.
YWP Media Library, watercolor by Nathaniel Steele, Danville, Vermont
Orwell, Vermont, Faith Holzhammer takes us to a gritty place this week as she contemplates the future of Earth and its youngest inhabitants.

Daylight swims in puddled rain,
milking Sunday afternoons with pain,
shattering the weakest segment of chain. 
Daylight questions dreamers' answers.
Dogs of hellfire, moonlit dancers.
Feet pounding the Earthlight into cancer.

We've dug our hands into the dirt
of society, planted our children there,
letting them grow into this corporate disease.
Is our future only weeds?
We've grown, ourselves, out of so much hurt.
So will anyone care
to explain to me the difference between hate, and lies...
and pesticides?

Daylight brings a shield from fear,
yet all the demons still are here.
But where will they be in 17-odd years?
The corporate children you have grown
will lock the raindrops from the sun,
for all the flowers were forced back to their homes.

We've burned our hands on the fire
of the human race, burning nature back.
With the new, diminish the old –
is our future made of coal?

The society that used to strike ambition,
inspiration,
is now – I'll say it –
striking fear, as if that is our job as humans –
to cause destruction.
But destruction is not a right. 
Hurt is not a right.
Pain is not a right.

But is there hope that's left to see
in the clutches of society
without swirling, and then draining?
Sunlight tricking us by playing
in puddles of our hope on the streets.
What is a right? 
 

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